


Frog Eggs

by JackyM



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is a Good husband, Dissociation, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, ceece just has anxiety and isn't feeling too hot ;o;
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9400931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyM/pseuds/JackyM
Summary: Sometimes people don't feel well. Sometimes people aren't sure of what they're feeling at all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thing from my Tumblr that got pretty long, and I'm fond of it. -w-

Long days have a way of working themselves in to people. Not just in the sense of exhaustion and soreness and tenseness, but emotionally.

But it hadn’t been a long day, at least, not in terms of Cecil’s workload. From his perspective, anyways. Carlos always told him he overworked himself, but Cecil always told him that was just a part of being a journalist, and a part of being a scientist, to which Carlos admitted was true but didn’t erase the fact that Cecil needed to not overwork himself.

Cecil didn’t know why not being overworked seemed to be just as painful as being too overworked. He felt tired, irritable, but most of all he didn’t feel much of anything. His head felt like fog and his mind felt like static. That wasn’t a new feeling, but it certainly wasn’t a welcome one, and never was to begin with.

He’d offered to pick Carlos up from work, since it started raining frog eggs and Carlos had walked to work while following a large green cloud shaped like a bullfrog that began materializing about when Carlos woke up, maybe a little beforehand. Though he felt distanced from everything happening around him, Cecil remembered, albeit fuzzily, Carlos shaking him awake, shouting something about a cloud shaped like a frog, not even bothering to get dressed before he left.

Cecil had his eyes on the windshield wipers. He wasn’t really paying attention to them; just watching them. They pushed the translucent eggs back and forth, back and forth around the windshield. The little black centers of them wriggled occasionally, weakly thrashing their little tails and shaking their little heads. They seemed completely unaware of how they were being pushed back and forth. They didn’t notice anything. One day they’d have to, but for the time being they were just sky tadpoles on someone’s windshield being pushed back and forth over and over again. In a sense, Cecil supposed he understood them. Unfazed by everything around them, completely oblivious to the bizarre ongoings of the town around them, stuck inside a little translucent sphere that made interacting with anything else other than their thoughts difficult. They didn’t seem to care about what was going on in the slightest.

Cecil heard the door open, and Carlos saying something to Rochelle about the frog eggs coming from the sky and how they definitely were self-fertilized and how this meant that the cloud frog was much more mysterious and exciting than originally anticipated.

Cecil put his hands on the keys resting in the ignition so he could start the car, but he didn’t turn them.

“They definitely _are_ self-fertilizing,” said Carlos, before Cecil could even begin contemplating saying anything, “we checked! We put a scientific device called a bucket outside and watched frog eggs fall into the bucket from the sky, and then when the scientific device called a bucket was finished gathering samples, we took it inside, and we looked at the eggs and sang to them for a long time, and recorded all of the movements and actions the eggs performed. Then we went to the chalkboard and drew a lot of African clawed frogs and giant Alaskan monster frogs and we realized the eggs were able to develop so quickly and with such proficiency is because they are self-fertilizing, a bit like a plant. But then, they’re not animals, because the frog that produced them was made of water entirely, not mostly water, like most animals. So that brings up the question of how clouds reproduce and how different clouds produce their offspring differently, Cecil!”

“Mmmhm,” was all Cecil could manage. He closed his eyes and sat back in his seat. He took his hand of the keys and rested them both on the wheel. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t thinking anything. He wasn’t sure what he felt, and by extension, he wasn’t feeling anything. If he was feeling anything, he didn’t know what it was. Maybe just frog eggs. Just translucent frog eggs being wiped back and forth.

“Poot?”

From his tone of voice, Cecil thought Carlos sounded puzzled, but he wasn’t entirely sure. It could be puzzlement, sure, but all day he’d had trouble reading people, like he always did when he felt the way he did, like he was watching a movie and completely separate from everything happening in front of him.

“Hmm?”

“I wasn’t sure if you heard me, did you hear me? I was telling you the frogs are self-fertilizing. Are you alright? Is it because of the blue smoke in your station? Is it negatively impacting you? I remember telling you that it’d probably be best to call a smoke exterminator, but you said you weren’t sure because they usually just add smoke and then I told you that made sense and if it negatively impacts you in the future though you should maybe see if someone who is not a smoke exterminator can take care of it.”

“That’s not it.”

“Oh! Well, that’s good then! Do you think the smoke does good things, then? Like help you or make you cards?”

“No, no, it’s. It’s nothing, Carlos, alright? Nothing. And I don’t care what it is and it has absolutely nothing to do with science.”

Cecil didn’t mean to say it as snappily as he had. He felt tears pushing themselves out of his eyes. He covered his mouth and rested his head on the wheel. He felt sad, now. More than sad. Devastated.

“I’m sorry,” said Carlos, “I should have—“

“No, no, and I’m sorry for interrupting, but, Carlos, please, don’t apologize. I’m sorry I snapped like that. And I’m sorry I said that it had absolutely nothing to do with science. I. I just meant that it’s not something caused by anything that can be understood, and trying to understand it all feels like too much right now.”

Cecil closed his eyes again and heard Carlos buckle himself in. For a moment Carlos played with the frills on his pajama shirt, saying nothing. Then he looked at Cecil and put a hand on one of Cecil’s.

“Nobody understands everything in science, either. Science is based on the idea that we _don’t_ understand everything. It wouldn’t exist if we did, and if all things were easy to understand just by looking at them. But just because you can’t understand something, that doesn’t mean it’s nothing, or unimportant.”

“You’re right,” said Cecil, nodding, “it just feels like it doesn’t matter. Nothing feels like it matters.”

“It does,” Carlos said, squeezing his husband’s hand, and looking out the window at the frog eggs, now coming down in a heavy downpour, “and you do.”

Cecil looked at Carlos. Carlos looked back, visibly worried, visibly upset. Cecil bit his inner lip in concern.

“I’m so sorry about what I said earlier, Carlos. And I’m so sorry for interrupting earlier. I know you have issues with it and I shouldn’t have done that, and I shouldn’t have snapped like that. If you’re mad I understand.”

Cecil looked down, to ashamed now to keep his head up.

“Mad? Ceece, why would I be?”

“Because of what I said, and how I said it…you’re not mad?”

“Of course not! Sometimes we say things we don’t mean to when we’re not feeling well, and when everything feels like it’s too much at the moment. Being upset or worried or overwhelmed or all three of those things sometimes lead to doing things like that. As long as you apologize later, I do not see a singular reason to get mad.”

“You’re way too much,” said Cecil, tearing up again, and beginning to cry, “you always know what to say, and you’re so wonderful, and I love you so much. I know I say that every day but I really mean it, I love you so much because of how perfect imperfect and smart and handsome you are. I know I’m usually better at speaking than this, but…I’m trying to tell you that every day, no matter how I feel, knowing you’re in my life will always make me feel happy.”

“I love you too,” said Carlos, pulling Cecil into a warm embrace, “and knowing you’re in my life will always make me feel happy, too. You’re so passionate and caring, and it’s so easy to see it in even the smallest everyday things you do.”

Carlos nuzzled and kissed his husband. For a moment they stayed there in a gentle embrace, saying nothing, thinking nothing, feeling everything at once but feeling at peace, and just enjoying each others’ company, and the sound of frog eggs landed on their car, showing no sign of letting up, still bombarding their car like a waterfall.

Cecil thought, after a few moments of hugging his husband and letting his tears subside, that he might not be like the frog eggs after all. For the first time that day, Cecil genuinely smiled, and buried his head into Carlos’ shoulder.

When they let each other go, Carlos smiled at Cecil, and put a hand on Cecil’s cheek, stroking it gently. 

“I think,” said Carlos, leaning forward to kiss his husband’s nose, “that I should drive us home.”

Cecil softly laughed, and kissed Carlos back.

“That’d be great, bunny.”


End file.
